UKFast Blog: March2012

Imagine you are waiting for the train, in the queue at the cash machine, or sat on a park bench. Your smartphone is in your hand, you’re fiddling with the latest apps, and you spot a QR code* stuck to the wall. There’s no branding, no text, just a code. Do you scan it? For many, curiosity would take control and they'd carelessly scan it to see where the code will take them. Therein lies the problem. QR codes don't offer any insight into the webpage that they will open, who has posted it or - more importantly - their…

As mentioned in the advanced notification, this month there are six security bulletins addressing seven issues: 1 Critical 4 Important 1 Moderate Special notice should be paid to MS12-020 (Windows). This bulletin addresses one Critical-class issue and one Moderate-class issue…

Remember when there were high streets full of local shops, butchers and greengrocers. Then along came the supermarket giants who pushed them out of the water. This could be the future of the social media world. Already dominated by social…

This is an advance notification of security bulletins that Microsoft is intending to release on March 13, 2012. Bulletin breakdown: 1 bulletin is rated as critical 4 bulletins are rated as important 2 vulnerabilities could lead to Remote Code Execution…

Virtual thieves have once again cracked the safe at electronic cash system Bitcoin and stolen thousands of dollars worth of the digital currency. Hackers exploited a vulnerability in cloud service provider Linode that allowed them to steal bitcoins worth more…

The next post in a series of technical 'question and answer' guest blogs written by one of the UKFast Linux aficionados Continuing from 'what does the swappiness parameter actually do?' I'll try to explain how much SWAP space there should…

What’s changing? Google will now have one single privacy policy encompassing all sections of the Google empire; YouTube, GoogleMaps and search included. It’s designed to be simpler to understand and enable the integration of each of Google’s sites in the…

By tapping ‘accept and download’ to add new apps onto your Android you could be giving the app-makers access to your camera, the calls you make, your texts and emails and your full contact list. The media has been all…